Hitchhiker's Guide to Dark Energy

2011 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Saul Perlmutter says he was the kind of kid who thought, "someone should have given us an owner's manual" to the universe. Lacking that, he and his fellow researchers have set out to create one. The job is nowhere near complete, of course. As astrophysicist Onsi Fakhouri says in the show, "70 percent of the stuff in the universe is this thing that we just do not understand at all"--namely, dark energy. In this installment of KQED's Quest, Perlmutter explains some of the science behind his prize-winning discovery of dark energy and how our universe is expanding in all directions. The subject matter is pretty mind-blowing, but as it urges "in large friendly letters" on the cover of every Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, DON'T PANIC.